


our burdens lay in the town we came from

by mothicalcreatures



Series: everyone is made new [1]
Category: The Musketeers (2014), The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, M/M, Post-Canon, it's musketeers post-canon, just a lil bit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:54:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24974170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mothicalcreatures/pseuds/mothicalcreatures
Summary: It had been bleak and overcast when Thomas had left and by the time he was on the road back to the farmhouse the sky had opened up and the rain was coming down in sheets. Everything he’d gotten, save a few things, would be soaked through, and he could only hope that the bread would not be inedible by the time he returned.He was pulled out of his thoughts abruptly by what sounded like a baby crying.
Relationships: Lucien Grimaud/Thomas Jopson
Series: everyone is made new [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1981924
Comments: 4
Kudos: 22





	our burdens lay in the town we came from

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bluebacchus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebacchus/gifts).



> @bluebacchus came into my house and forced me to watch BBC's Musketeers. I cannot believe that Matthew McNulty played both Lucien Grimaud and Edward Little, they seem like two entirely different people. [insert the Sir Patrick Stewart "acting" gif here]
> 
> The title is from "City of Refuge" by Abigale Washburn. I didn't realize that it was a folk song that everyone and their mother has done a cover/adaptation of.

If there was one thing that Thomas Jopson was good at, it was making himself invisible in a crowd. It had, in the end, been the only thing that had gotten them out of the church and then out of Paris. Lucien had been unable to move on his own, even after Thomas had gotten him breathing again, so the going had been slow until they’d reached the safe house and retrieved Lucien’s horse.

They were now camped in an abandoned farmhouse a good few miles from the closest populated town. Staying there would have been too much of a risk; while they did not seem to have been followed out of Paris, those damn musketeers had been far too cunning and deadly for them to risk being seen so soon. Well, for Lucien to risk being seen. Thomas had once grumbled that Lucien never let him in on his dealings in Paris (After all, why had he brought Thomas to Paris with him if he hadn’t wanted his help?), but he was glad now that he’d been kept inrelative darkness.

Lucien continued to slip in and out of consciousness over the next few days. Infection had set into the wound in his shoulder and the deep wound in his gut wasn’t doing much better, despite Thomas’s best efforts. The only wound that appeared to be healing well was the gash on his thigh, but he was still feverish and there was only so much Thomas could do on his own with the limited supplies left at the farm; most everything of use had been looted a long time ago. Traveling to the nearby town seemed to be the only option at this point, though Thomas was loath to leave Lucien alone in case something happened.

“I’ll be back before the end of the day,” Thomas said, as he mopped sweat from Lucien’s brow. “The town’s only a few hours ride.”

Lucien’s eyes flashed to Thomas, his hand fumbling as he caught Thomas’s wrist.

Thomas continued without concern, reaching out with his other hand to brush a lock of stray hair out of Lucien’s face. “I’ve left food and water on the bedside table, eat and drink what you can. I’ll be back with better food and medicine.”

When Lucien’s eyes fluttered shut, Thomas eased his hand from his wrist and stood. He leaned down to kiss Lucien on the forehead before grabbing his satchel and heading out the door.

It had been bleak and overcast when Thomas had left and by the time he was on the road back to the farmhouse the sky had opened up and the rain was coming down in sheets. Everything he’d gotten, save a few things, would be soaked through, and he could only hope that the bread would not be inedible by the time he returned.

He was pulled out of his thoughts abruptly by what sounded like a baby crying. More likely a wounded animal, he thought, and he drew the horse to a halt. If the rain had spoiled any of the food he’d purchased, bringing in meat would be a welcome replacement.

Dismounting, he listened for the sound again, as the rain was coming down so heavily it obscured all but the loudest of noises. The crying came again, and he moved toward it slowly, hand on his pistol. Then he paused. The crying was coming from under a low shrub, and now that Thomas was closer he found it did sound more like a baby than any animal he’d heard.

His suspicions were confirmed when he crouched down to look beneath the shrub. Sure enough, there was a baby, wrapped in a muddy, sodden blanket and crying itself hoarse. It couldn’t be more than a few weeks old. Thomas scooped the poor little thing into his arms without thinking. None of his clothes would be warmer or drier, so he simply pressed the child close to his chest and carefully climbed back onto the horse, wrapping his cloak around the babe as tight as he could.

Thomas arrived back at the farmhouse much later than he’d anticipated, the rain and the baby having made for much slower travel on the return journey. The baby was quiet, having cried itself to sleep not long before the house came into view. While a relief, it had been worrying at the same time. When the baby was crying, Thomas had not needed to worry about it being alive.

The first thing he did, after getting the horse back into the stable, was to strip the baby of its sodden blanket and wrap it in one of the old saddle blankets that had been left behind. Then he unloaded the saddle bags, gave the horse a quick rub down, and made a mad dash for the house.

The baby hadn’t woken, which was a relief, but Thomas was not at all pleased to be find that Lucien had dragged himself out of bed and collapsed against the wall. He looked miserable. His chest was a messof bandages and Thomas could see blood beginning to seep through the bandages at his shoulder.

Lucien looked up as Thomas entered. “Thomas…”

“I told you I’d be back,” Thomas muttered, more to himself than anything, and he carefully set the baby down on the table before dropping the bags and making his way over to Lucien.

Lucien was still burning with fever, but, despite that, he managed to fight Thomas all the way back to the bedroom and into bed.

“You need to stay in bed,” Thomas scolded as he sat at Lucien’s bedside, holding the cup of water from the bedside table so that he could drink.

“We need to leave,” Lucien slurred when Thomas pulled the cup back.

Thomas shook his head. “Not now, we’re safe… at least as we can be. The musketeers think you’re dead. They won’t be looking for you.”

They might be, Thomas realized, since they would have eventually noticed Lucien’s body was missing, but that was a worry for another time. For now, Thomas knew they had not been followed and they had encountered no one on the road on their flight from Paris who might tell of them. Thomas had made a point of avoiding the roads for that reason.

There was a small cry from the other room and Thomas set the cup down. “Don’t move,” he hissed, getting to his feet. “I don’t have my sewing kit to fix you up again should your wounds tear open.”

The baby put up much less of a fuss than Lucien. He was simply distressed, not ornery, and once Thomas had gotten him properly washed and swaddled, he was sleeping comfortably once again. Using another blanket to make a nest for the baby on the table, Thomas began going through the supplies he’d gotten to see what could be salvaged.

The extra clothing he’d purchased he hung in front of the hearth to dry, the meagre vegetables were also fine, as was the bottle of medication he’d picked up from a traveling salesmen. The man had claimed it could cure any fever, which Thomas greatly doubted. Still, with any luck it would help with something, if only making Lucien too drowsy to attempt to reopen his wounds by insisting he needed to be up and about.

As Thomas had expected, the two loaves bread had soaked up the water like a sponge. He could likely make a passable gruel or porridge out of them, which would be good for the baby, but certainly less than ideal for him and Lucien. They would eat it of course, as money was limited for the moment and food was not to be wasted. Getting a fire going in the hearth, he set the one of the two loaves down in front of the fire, in the perhaps vain hope that it might dry out enough to be edible on it’s own, and set about preparing what would be their meals for the next few days.

He kept a careful ear out for any noise from the bedroom as he did, waiting for the inevitable sounds of Lucien trying to get up. When they came, as Thomas was cutting the first loaf of bread into pieces, he wiped his hands on his trousers, grabbed the bottle of medicine, checked to make sure the baby was still sleeping and marched into the bedroom, where he found Lucien sitting on the bed and trying to pull on his boots.

Thomas yanked the boots out of Lucien’s hands and tossed them to the floor. Lucien swayed where he sat. “We need to leave.”

“We don’t,” Thomas said firmly as he grabbed Lucien’s good arm to maneuver him back into lying down.

Lucien’s attempts to push Thomas away were worryingly weak. “Thomas… Tommy, we need…”

Thomas cut him off before he could finish. “We need a great many things, but moving is not one of them. You’re delirious. We had this same conversation not half an hour ago.” He paused to refill the cup of water and poured a cap full of the medicine into it. “Drink this, you’ll feel better.”

Lucien looked skeptically at the cup, his lips a tight line. Thomas prodded the injury on Lucien’s leg and he hissed in pain. “Fine.”

It didn’t take long for whatever was in medication to start working once Lucien had drained the glass. Opium probably, Thomas guessed, and he didn’t miss the panic that flashed in Lucien’s eyes as the drug started pulling him under.

“Just rest,” Thomas murmured, stroking Lucien’s hair. “You’ll be all right.” He continued speaking to him softly until he was certain Lucien was asleep, before returning to see to their food and the baby.

Lucien’s fever broke the next morning. Thomas had made up a bed for himself in the main room of the house so he could see to a crying baby through the night without disturbing Lucien over much, and it was an incredible relief to check in on him in the early morning to find him almost cool to the touch instead of burning. However, this also meant they’d reached the end of how long Thomas could effectively keep Lucien in bed. He certainly wouldn’t be able to get him to take any more of the medication.

Still, Lucien remained in bed for several more hours before he stumbled out of the bedroom and over to where Thomas sat in front of the hearthfeeding the baby, who he’d taken to calling George.

“You drugged me last night.” Lucien growled. It was not half as menacing as he likely meant it to sound as there were threads of exhaustion and pain in his voice.

“I gave you medication for your fever,” Thomas said. Nothing about that was a lie, even if he didn’t believe the medication was responsible for Lucien’s fever breaking. “Your wounds had gone bad.”

Lucien breathed heavily, clearly masking pain, as he made his way over to the chair next to Thomas and sat down. “What of the musketeers? Are you sure we weren’t followed.”

“I would assume the musketeers are still busy in Paris, rebuilding their garrison and possibly looking for you,” Thomas said, shifting George in his arms.

“Possibly?”

“They think you’re dead, unless they consider your body disappearing cause for alarm,” Thomas explained. “However, I don’t think they’ll be looking for you outside of Paris.”

“There’s no guarantee of that.” Lucien made to get to his feet, but Thomas tugging him down by his injured arm had him hissing in pain and collapsing back into the chair.

He glared at Thomas once he’d gathered himself again.

“We’re staying where we are. You _did_ die, Lucien,” Thomas snapped. “You weren’t breathing when I found you. Please, let us rest here a while longer until you recover your strength. A few more days at least…”

Lucien’s hand clenched tightly on his knee and Thomas set down the cup he’d been using to feed George to reach over to take Lucien’s hand. George gurgled quietly.

At that Lucien finally turned to look at Thomas and the look on his face when he noticed the baby might have been comical if Thomas had not known it to betray fear. 

Lucien withdrew his hand from Thomas in an instant. “Why is there a child?”

“I found him abandoned on the roadside on my way from town. I couldn’t leave him.” Thomas shifted the baby to give Lucien a better look at him. “I’ve been calling him George.”

Lucien’s face twitched like he intended to say something, but he remained silent.

“Here,” Thomas said, getting to his feet, “I need you to hold him for a moment while I draw you a bath.”

Lucien tensed, but as Thomas carefully arranged George in his lap his posture began to ease again. “We can’t keep him.”

“I’m sure we can find a family somewhere who will want him,” Thomas said. “But for now, he will not survive without us, and doesn’t he deserve what chance we can give him?”

Lucien was quiet. He watched the boy, utterly transfixed, as if waiting for something to happen. Thomas watched them for a moment longer before disappearing into the kitchen to find the wash basin he’d been using to bathe.

They did not leave George in the next town they came to, or the one after that. Lucien’s complaint of them both was the same, the people of the towns were already starving without another mouth to feed. Thomas did not point out that almost every town they came across would be like that.

“We’ll stop here for the night,” Lucien said, drawing his horse a halt in front of an abandoned barn. The farmhouse, if it could still be called that, that had once stood nearby was completely collapsed and the barn was only in a better state in that it was still upright.

Thomas frowned, but brought his horse to a stop next to Lucien nonetheless. “We could keep going. If there’s a farm here, there’s bound to be a town nearby, we could get a room at an inn.”

“We’re too close to Paris,” Lucien replied, spurring his horse forward again, toward the dilapidated barn.

“And if we kept going, we could get further away from Paris,” Thomas muttered to himself as he followed after Lucien.

Once inside, Thomas began adjusting George against his chest as he prepared to dismount. The boy was asleep, but it would be all to easy to wake him if he was too jostled, and then there was making sure that the makeshift sling that secured the boy to his chest wouldn’t come undone. It hadn’t yet, but knots could come undone and Thomas would worry until he could get his hands on a sewing kit so he could secure it further. His old kit had been one of many things left behind in their flight from Paris.

“Give him to me.”

Thomas looked up to see Lucien standing next him, arms outstretched, waiting to be passed the baby. He hesitated, just a moment, before undoing the sling instead of securing it. “Make sure you support his head,” Thomas reminded Lucien as he carefully lowered George into his arms.

He needn’t have worried, Lucien took George into his arms with an ease that in no way betrayed this was only his third time holding the child. As he dismounted, he heard Lucien mutter, “You’ve caused an awful lot of problems for someone so small.”

Thomas smiled as he led his horse into the stall next to Lucien’s. It wasn’t so much that he _wanted_ to keep George, he would truly be better off with a stable family to care for him, but it was endearing to see him slowly wearing away at Lucien’s guardedness and to see Lucien show the boy something almost like real affection.

“He hasn’t caused that many problems,” Thomas said, emerging from the stall. “You’ve caused more with your inability to rest your injuries.”He was relieved to see that Lucien had at least had the good sense to sit down, though the bench he’d chosen looked rather rickety.

Lucien looked up at Thomas. “We move more slowly because of him.”

“And because of your injuries,” Thomas added, moving over to sit down next to Lucien. “You know as well as I do that we could press on further, even with George, if you didn’t have that gut wound.”

The first day they’d started traveling again (too soon, in Thomas’s opinion), they’d pushed on past the point of what Lucien’s injuries could tolerate and he’d passed out on dismounting his horse. After that, Thomas had taken care to subtly find ways to slow their progress to keep Lucien from doing more damage to his injuries. Admittedly, Thomas did use George to instigate many of their rests, saying he needed changed or fed and then drawing out the time needed for such an activity longer than strictly necessary.

Lucien glared at Thomas for several moments, before turning his attention back to George who was mouthing at one of his hands and staring intently up at Lucien.

“Where are we headed?” Thomas asked, after a few more moments of silence.

“The coast,” Lucian said, not looking up from George. “Nantes, then down to Bordeaux. There’s always plenty of business to be done in a port town.”

Thomas leaned over to tease George’s hand out of his mouth, letting the boy latch onto his finger instead. “A port town is good. How long would we be in Nantes before heading south?”

“That will depend on the business to be had in Nantes. I once had a number of people there, but we’ve been out of touch.”

“But Bordeaux puts more distance between us and Paris, and hasn’t that been your goal these last few days?” His words were teasing and he grinned broadly as George cooed.

Thomas looked up just in time to see Lucien’s mouth quirk into a split second smile before he answered. “Nantes is a safe enough distance and there’s a better chance of us finding someone there to take in George before we head south.”

Thomas pouted, for just a moment, at that, but he quickly turned it into making a silly face at George as Lucien turned to look at him.

“Do you have reasons to want to head straight to Bordeaux?” Lucien asked.

Thomas shook his head. “I’ve never been.”

Lucien hummed, but made no further comment.

Lucien’s injuries showed marked improvement from where they had been when they’d first set out again. Enough so that Lucien was growing increasingly irritated every time Thomas sat him down to check and rebandage and them.

“There is no need for this,” Lucien hissed quietly as Thomas forced him down on their bed rolls and instructed him to remove his shirt.

Thomas sat down next to Lucien and began peeling away the soiled bandages around his shoulder. “There is _every_ need for this.”

The wound was closing, but it was red and swollen, likely from continued agitation throughout the day. Thomas cleared away a small amount of dried blood, less than yesterday, and rebandaged the injury. “I wish I’d had my sewing kit,” Thomas muttered. “These would be so much cleaner if I could have stitched them shut.”

“You did just fine with what you had,” Lucien said, and Thomas glanced up in surprise.

Lucien caught his chin and leaned in to kiss him gently before speaking again. “You saved my life, Tommy. Don’t worry yourself about scars.”

Thomas felt his face grow hot and there were sudden tears pressing behind his eyes. He had not cried in the moment when he’d found Lucien, nor had he cried when Lucien had begun sputtering and coughing up water as he tried to breath, or even the first time Thomas had laid Lucien out to see to his wounds, but the weight of all that had happened now felt as if it were crushing him.

Lucien traced his thumb along Thomas’s cheekbone and Thomas let out a choked sob.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been more frightened than I was when I found you,” he murmured, voice thick. “You weren’t breathing, Lucien. You were dead… you…” He trailed off as the tears he’d been holdingback finally overflowed.

“I am alive now,” Lucien said. He brushed the tears from Thomas’s cheek before drawing Thomas in.

It wasn’t an embrace, but it was something like it, and as Thomas shifted to rest his head on Lucien’s shoulder, Lucien brought his hand to rest against Thomas’s back.

They sat like that for several long moments before George started to fuss from where Thomas had nestled him in a pile of blankets. He let out a long sigh as he drew back from Lucien’s warmth and got to his feet, while Lucien turned away to pull on his shirt again.

George didn’t need to be changed and Thomas had fed the boy not half an hour ago, but once Thomas got him calm again, he would fuss terrible every time Thomas tried to put him down.

“Bring him over here,” Lucien grumbled from where he lay in their bed rolls. “He’s probably cold and it’s only going to get colder.”

Thomas tucked George against his chest as he lowered himself to the ground next to Lucien, who shuffled to the side to make room for Thomas.

“You seem very fond of the boy,” Lucien said, once George was nestled safely between them.

“I am,” Thomas admitted. “But we can’t keep him, you are right about that. There is too much risk involved in the life we live for him.”

Lucien hummed. “We’ll have to see what we can find when we reachNantes.”


End file.
